Smashing Newsletter

Art is not restricted to any medium, nor is digital painting. Yes, you read that right: “digital painting.” It is a new trend in today’s technologically brilliant world that won’t go away any time soon. Here, we’ve gathered 35 tutorials to inspire you to display your creativity through digital painting.

Art is not restricted to any medium, nor is digital painting. Yes, you read that right: “digital painting.” It is a new trend in today’s technologically brilliant world that won’t go away any time soon. Here, we’ve gathered 35 tutorials to inspire you to display your creativity through digital painting. We hope you like this collection. Kindly share your comments about it with us.

Digital Painting Tutorials

Making of “My Prince”
“The girl in the picture is a young witch with mysterious magic. The baby dragon is her pet. The baby dragon looks up to the sky naively, strains the leash, and wants to fly into an adventure. Overall, I wanted to create a peaceful scene, just like when we are holding our own pets, that makes you feel warm, or even proud.”

Umbrella Sky
Marta Dahlig’s gorgeous “Umbrella Sky” image was unanimously chosen for the cover of Ballistic Publishing’s EXOTIQUE 3. And after submitting it, Marta continued to improve on this exquisite work. Here, she takes us through the process of building on a dream.

How to Create a Fantasy Mother Nature Scene
“This tutorial is about creating a fantasy scene called ‘Mother Nature.’ We will use well-chosen images, brushes and, most of all, our imagination, in combination with Photoshop techniques, to create an outstanding image.”

Making of Beauty on the Bed
“It was obvious that a female character was an ideal subject. I knew I wanted to create a girl with imposing beauty. I am a huge fan of Lara Swift’s photography, and one particular photograph in my collection really inspired and motivated me to start.”

How to Create a Sparkling Fantasy Photo Manipulation
“In this tutorial, we’re going to do photo manipulation using different techniques. We’ll adjust each layer and element to make a compact final image. We’ll use multiple photos and a handful of effects to create this work.”

Modeling of the Dinosaur
“When working with ZBrush, I always model something with Z-sphere. It is one of ZBrush’s cool features and enables fast and intuitive modeling of low poly objects. Also, I like that you can constantly check the outcome of your ZSphere form against how it looks when turned into mesh by pressing the ‘A’ key on your keyboard.”

Feathers and Angel Wings
Painting wings is quite similar to painting hair: the first time you do it, it seems impossible, but in fact it’s not, and little tips can help a lot.

Making of Binah
“Binah was a difficult and time-consuming project. It was a great challenge for me, technically and artistically. Binah is the third Sephirah of the tree of life in Cabbala. After reading many texts about the tree of life, I wrote some sentences describing my vision of Binah.”

Making of Jealous Bodyguard
In this tutorial, the artist shows you his preferred method of setting up the image and using Photoshop tools. You’ll see a breakdown of how this image was created.

Digitally Paint a Fantasy Tree Scene
“Learn how to make a fantasy scene using only the standard Photoshop brushes. I describe the basics of color and light theory. In this tutorial, you will paint this eye-catching illustration in less than two hours.”

Fantasy Light Effects in Photoshop
Fantasy art scenes are usually handled with a liberal sprinkling of Photoshop plug-in fairy dust. But you don’t have to slavishly follow that route. By creating your own brushes in Adobe Illustrator and using scanned elements with Photoshop, creating otherworldly scenes that are alive with glow effects and shafts of virtual light is a simple process.

Painting fantasy eyes
To paint a realistic-looking eye, one must understand its form. The human eye is a sphere, covered by upper and lower eyelids. Imagining parallel lines passing along the eyes makes it easier to sketch them correctly.

Create Film Sets in Photoshop
Film scenes frequently rely on vast backdrops and fantasy imagery that would be too costly or impractical to actually build or find. This is where matte painting comes in. Visual effects artists are called on to create both simple and elaborate illusions by painting over real images.

Red Assassin Digital Painting Tutorial
“Here’s how I do my painting. This is a work in progress, so you’ll see the steps I take in creating it. This is a quick sketch over a black background. Then I fill it with colors. I normally place my palette of colors beside the drawing so that I know what the colors will be.”

Do you want to Play with me
“This artwork was created in Photoshop CS2 with a Wacom Intuos 3. I will explain in detail how to make this image. Hope many of you will enjoy.”

Making of Three Lines
In this detailed tutorial, the artist teaches us how to make “artwork of three lines.”

Making of Willpower
“I’ve always found the thought of someone faint and helpless, suddenly being able to fight against the worst of dangers, very appealing. This is the point when everything changes, when the lost decide to escape their fate. In my image, a brave young girl is in a situation she would never believe she’d get into, and then something happens that no one would ever expect!”

How to Draw a Digital Portrait
In this tutorial, the artist explains how he created this portrait of the gorgeous Scarlett Johansson.

Painting Kadaj
In this detailed and comprehensive tutorial, the artist shows his best techniques for making this portrait of Kadaj.

Painting realistic hands
Painting hands can be very difficult for professional and amateur artists alike. The complexity of their structure makes them one of the hardest parts of the human body to render properly. Painting realistic hands requires two key factors for a satisfying result: a thorough knowledge of anatomy, and a creative choice of skin tone.

Transform a Human into an Abstract Painted Werewolf
“In this tutorial, you will learn how to bring a simple concept to life and give it a fantastic final result. Beside illustrating the human-to-werewolf transformation, we will fill the images with cool painted effects and add some abstraction in the end.”

Making of Angelina Jolie
“After having collected some pictures of the famous actress Angelina Jolie, I decided to use some of them for this creation. Before starting the modeling phase, I took a moment to observe the features of this beautiful actress—above all, her cheekbones, which are very pronounced.”

Skin Painting Tutorial
“I want to clarify that this tutorial is not the correct or only way to paint. It is just my way of painting, and only that. Feel free to follow it entirely or just the part that pleases you. I will be using Photoshop, but the tutorial can be done on any program that has good painting tools.”

Painting Really Old People
“The Internet is full of young, pretty people with large breasts. But believe it or not, people do get old. And wrinkly. And nothing is wrong with that. It can actually be fun and interesting to draw people who don’t have silky smooth skin! This tutorial shares some methods I’ve found for painting wrinkles and some thoughts on how to make a character look old.”

Making of Bronze Dragon
“In this tutorial, we are going to color a dragon portrait. As I always say, it’s impossible to make a good painting without a good sketch. That’s why, if your drawings are not as strong as you’d like, you should buy a sketchbook before picking up Photoshop.”

Spider Harp
“This fantasy is of musician playing the harp on a spider’s web. It was a personal piece and a really big and delicate work. I thank the users of 3Dvf.com and Tdt3D.be for helping my work in progress.”

Making Frodo
A detailed and beautiful tutorial that teaches you to make a great Frodo.

How to Create a Fantasy Landscape Photo Manipulation
In this tutorial, you will learn how to manipulate a fantasy landscape photo.